Ruling AKP's deputy Şirin Ünal visited the headquarters of the General Staff in Ankara hours before a failed coup on July 15, 2016.

Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Şirin Ünal visited the headquarters of the General Staff in Ankara hours before a failed coup on July 15, according to an indictment concerning the coup attempt, the Sözcü daily reported on Saturday.

Ünal reportedly met with Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar at 4 p.m. on July 15 and notified Akar that MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan would come to General Staff headquarters at 6 p.m. and that a raid would take place at MİT headquarters.

The indictment also revealed that Akar’s aide Levent Türkkan, who is currently under arrest on coup charges, made phone calls to Ünal and Environment Minister Mehmet Özhaseki and that these phone calls were made three days after the coup attempt, on July 18. Türkkan was in police custody on July 18.

Although it has been more than nine months since the coup attempt, which killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others, no light has yet been shed on the background of the incident. Some claim that the government knew about the coup plot but did not prevent it because it wanted to use it as a pretext for a massive purge it would launch against its critics.

Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.

Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

According to a statement from Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on April 2, a total of 113,260 people have been detained as part of investigations into the Gülen movement since the July 15 coup attempt, while 47,155 were put into pre-trial detention. (turkishminute.com) April 29, 2017